|
High Efficiency Speaker Asylum Need speakers that can rock with just one watt? You found da place. |
|
|
|
High Efficiency Speaker Asylum Need speakers that can rock with just one watt? You found da place. |
|
In Reply to: RE: Herb Reichert: Our Man At Stereophile posted by Joe Roberts on January 15, 2016 at 05:41:38:
Stereophile actually began in 1962 by JGH, and The Absolute Sound began in 1973 by Harry Pearson, but I have to admit that I was only dimly aware of them until the late 80's when a friend (who posed the question that inspired this post) decided he needed to upgrade his Advent/Sherwood rig (when his toddler daughter poked holes in the surrounds), and he started lending me the rags. I had a gift subscription to Stereophile from my daughter in the late 80's, which she neglected to pay for, but I stuck it out, but I never felt comfortable there. I let the sub lapse, but the turning point came for me with a later loaned issue where there was a heated discussion of the merits of the Tice Clock. I wanted to keep my place by tearing out the pages I had already read! But the rag was a loaner which I felt compelled to return. I had a subscription to Stereo Review from the late 70's into early 90's, and several times I was going to switch to Audio, but they would have a good issue once and a while and I kept on. During that time there was one mention in an edditorial about the efficiency of the Klipsch Horn, but except for a review of the EV Sentry and another JBL direct radiator horn hybrid, you'd have hardly known that horn speakers (or tube amps) for the home existed. This is except for an ad in the back of the mag where a collector was seeking tube amps and theater horn speakers. This was apparently Walt Bender of Audiomart who actually was making a living buying this stuff and sending it to Japan at the time. There were occasional humorous mentions of how the crazy Japanese were spending crazy money for 1930's Western Electric tube amps with a mere 8 Watts! You once said that you started Sound Practices in the early 90's "...to shake up the high end".., and this did so as a case of dynamite would shake up an out house over due for a move.
Now back in the early 60's a neighbor of ours on the west side of Chicago put together a very spectacular EV based horn system in his basement. This was a rig that could actually image in the early 60's! You could actually localize accurately the various instruments of the orchestra at a time when most people had mono "boom" consoles. At one point a subwoofer with an EV 30W showed up, and it could go down to the 16 Hz C1 of a pipe organ! This was a rig that was easily one of the best rigs I've ever heard, and it was in the early 60's!
Jumping forward to the late 70's, my dad had built a few back loaded bass horns in the 60's which he sold to a few guys in his club, and we had one at home then too, but one of them had never been assembled and existed as a bunch of plywood pieces in the garage, which my brother and I were warned never to touch. My dad offered to give me this pair, a BLH for a 12" driver, and I accepted with the intention of putting together a portable sound system for a band I was kind of in at the time. We put them together, but I promptly lost interest in being a sound man. Ry Cooder once said that bands were like mental institutions. I mean, if there's a room full of people and one of them is a neurotic musician, then I want to be that neurotic musician! Anyway my dad had to move at one point in '79 -80 and announced that he was going to drop the horns off at my place. During a point of inactivity during that cold winter I decided to put one of the horns together to hear what it sounded like: we modified the BLH for an EV 15B; I had EV 1823/8HD's mids; and a couple of Motorola pieizo tweeters. I hooked one of them up to my HK 330 on the left side with one of my Alted Model 9's on the right (a 12" 3 way) and I could barely hear the Altec! I checked the wiring and amp and found nothing wrong, and it took awhile for it to sink in what was happening. I had thought the horn would be louder, but only because they could handle a lot more power. I could'nt believe that one of them could actually drown out one of the Altecs which I though were quite loud and sounded pretty good too! Very soon the other horn was completed, and they became the main listening system when they crowded the Altecs out, and the Altecs became the monitors in the 4 track recording studio in the adjoining dining room. The horns just had that big sound that I remembered from my dad's hi-fi club from the 60's.
Moving forward again to the late 90's early 00's, I attended a meeting of the Chicago Horn Club and heard Tom Brennan's Altec Voice of the Theater A5 rig. It sounded a bit rough at the time, a good rock'n roll rig, but my rig sounded better with well recorded stuff. However it kept evolving, and with some tube amps on the Altec mids it became one of the best rigs I've ever heard. The imaging was adequate, but everything you put on it sounded good! My rig only sounded good with well recorded stuff at the time, and this just had to go, and I had to do a re-thnk of the whole thing. I wanna hear what I wanna hear now! I don't care if it's well recorded or not! Herb had mentioned this in SP as a warning sign, that if you're tending to listen only to well recorded stuff, then you're on the wrong track (with a likely tilt towards the treble ala Holt). The most astounding thing was that Tom's rig had the sound at the movies in someones' house! It finally dawned on me what I had been looking for all along was the sound of those Altecs VOT's I had grown up listening to, but never saw, behind the movie screens all those years. Sorry to go back to a visual analogy again, but back in the 70's I was working on a scientific discipline which would combine cosmology and metaphysics. I called it cosmetics, and I got no respect at all.
Well at this point there's no going back. Contra to John Atkinson, I'm suspicious of any speaker having claims of very high performance which is not horn loaded.
Paul
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
Follow Ups
- RE: Herb Reichert: Our Man At Stereophile - Paul Eizik 21:26:46 01/15/16 (0)
Top of Page ]
[ Contact Us ]
[ Support/Wish List ]
[ Copyright © 2024, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]
